Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 January 2025
What is to become
of the Kurds, by far Syria’s largest minority at some two million people?
The Syrian civil
war, starting in 2011, brought the Kurds to the forefront of the region’s
politics. In face of the all-conquering military advance of Islamic State (ISIS),
Syrian government forces abandoned many Kurdish occupied areas in the
north-east of the country, leaving the Kurds to administer them. A US-led coalition, bent on defeating ISIS,
allied itself with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which proved remarkably
successful. It look less than two years
to reconquer ISIS-held territory, and in the process the Kurdish occupied area
of north-east Syria, known as Rojava, gained de facto autonomy.
The capture by Kurdish forces of the township of Manbij from ISIS on 12 August 2016 produced along Turkey’s southern border a swath of territory, largely controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias. This area was closely adjacent to Iraq's Kurdistan Region, the Kurdish populated area granted autonomy in Iraq’s 2005 constitution.
Erdogan has
consistently viewed the People's Protection Units (YPG), the dominant force in
the SDF, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group widely designated
as a terrorist organization.
Accordingly in
2016 Erdogan instituted Operation Euphrates Shield, capturing an area in north Syria from Jarabulus to Al-Bab. He followed this two years later with Operation
Olive Branch during which he overran Afrin.
In 2019, after the US announced its withdrawal from parts of northern
Syria, he launched Operation Peace Spring, establishing a so-called "safe
zone" on the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border. He aimed to use it to resettle Syrian
refugees currently in Turkey.
Erdogan has more or less annexed all the areas
he has overrun. They are now governed by
Turkey-backed local councils, use the Turkish lira as currency, and are heavily
influenced by Turkish infrastructure projects, including schools, hospitals,
and post offices.
Turkey, a
long-time supporter of the rebel movement that overthrew the dictatorial regime
of Bashar al-Assad – the HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) – now has strong political
influence with its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa. Erdogan no doubt hopes to use it to control
his perennial Kurdish problem by continuing to occupy the swaths of Syria that
he has overrun. But despite his dominant
political position in post-Assad Syria, it is far from certain that he will be
able to do so.
Al-Sharaa’s intentions regarding minorities in general, and the Kurds in particular, are still very unclear. Ever since the fall of the Assad regime al-Sharaa has presented a moderate face to the world, consistently declaring that he intends to be as inclusive as possible in establishing Syria’s new governance. In short, he may not endorse the continued occupation by Turkey of large areas of sovereign Syria. Moreover he has said several times that Kurds are “part of the Syrian homeland” while assuring the nation that “there will be no injustice”.
If any ethnic
group deserves justice, it is the Kurds.
Once upon a time,
many thousands of years ago, a proud and independent nation lived and thrived
in its own land in the heart of the Middle East. Subject to many foreign
invasions, this ethnically distinct people refused to be integrated with their
various conquerors, but retained their individual culture. At the start of the
First World War, their country was a small part of the Ottoman empire. In
shaping the future Middle East after the war the Allied powers, especially
Britain, promised to act as guarantors of this people’s freedom. That promise
was subsequently broken.
Similar though
this sounds to the story of the Jewish people, it is in fact the broad outline
of the long, convoluted and unresolved history of the Kurds.
The Kurds – nearly
35 million strong – are the largest stateless nation in the world. Historically
they inhabited a distinct geographical area flanked by mountain ranges, once
referred to as Kurdistan. No such location is depicted on current maps, for the
old Kurdistan now falls within the sovereign space of four separate states:
Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Most Kurds – some 25 million – live within
Turkey’s borders, there are 2 million in Syria, while within Iraq the 5 million
Kurds have developed a near autonomous state. Nearly 7 million Kurds are
trapped inside Iran’s extremist Shi’ite regime.
The Treaty of
Sèvres, marking the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, stipulated
a referendum to decide the issue of the Kurdistan homeland. That referendum never took place, and the
Sèvres treaty itself was rendered null and void in 1922 by the establishment of
the Turkish Republic under Kemal Ataturk. What followed was a new treaty, the Treaty of
Lausanne, which gave control of the then Kurdistan homeland to the new
republic. With a stroke of the colonial pen over 20 million Kurds were declared
Turkish.
Kurdish autonomy achieved its greatest recognition in the 2005 Iraqi constitution, which established the Kurdistan Region as a federal entity within Iraq, with its own local government and legal framework. The Kurds in Syria will be well aware of that. Nor will they forget that something akin to it was actually offered to them by the Assad regime. In March 2015 the then Syrian information minister announced that the government was considering recognizing Kurdish autonomy "within the law and constitution."
Later, in September 2017, Syria's then foreign
minister stated that Damascus would consider granting Kurds greater autonomy
once ISIS was defeated. Events overtook these aspirations, and nothing of the
sort materialized. But they might
provide al-Sharaa with a template for a future accommodation with the Kurds
within the constitution of a unified and restored Syrian state.
Much though Erdogan
might deplore the effect on Turkey’s domestic political scene, he may yet see
an autonomous Kurdish region recognized within a new Syrian constitution, and
even, eventually, some form of alliance between that and the Kurdistan Region
of Iraq.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "What will Turkey do with Syria's Turkish population?", 13 January 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-837218
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